Crash

So this morning I headed out to our branch located in Immokalee.  There was a network router installed a couple days ago that appeared to be “mounted” in a very poor spot.  I figured I could easily find a better location for it.  Well when I got into the closet I saw there was really no obvious options, the room was PACKED.  The router was replacing an older one which was half it’s size.  This new Cisco router was almost the size of a normal desktop pc.  It was mounted sideways on a wire shelf with telecom wire securing it in place.

So I scanned the room again and again, trying to use my McGyver instincts to come up with a better solution.  In the back corner there was a rack screwed to the wall that had fiber optic stuff in it.  I eye balled the top of the rack, wondering if I could put the router up there where it would be out of the way.

I did not want to disrupt the service to our office so I was trying to move the router around while it was live.  I placed the router in the new spot but the power cable was stretched to it’s max since it was attached to a UPS on the floor.   I knelt down to move the UPS closer.  As I did so I must have somehow managed to bump the cord just enough to pull the router forward past it’s tenuous balance point on the rack.  All of a sudden I heard a tremendous racket followed by pain in my left arm.  The new router had fallen off the top of the rack, smashed into another wire shelf below, ripping it out of the wall, bounced off my arm and onto the floor.

I held my breath for a second as my arm started to ooze blood from the impact.  The router still appeared to be functional and the shelf it took out did not appear to have anything crucial on it.  This room has network equipment for a ton of government agencies so I was very lucky I didn’t take out a bunch of networks.  The security guard came running in when he heard the noise.  I told him everything was fine but asked if he had any tools I could borrow to put the shelf back on the wall.

I reattached the shelf and put anything that was knocked down back in place.  The new router went right back to the place it was.  There was no way I was fcking with it further.   I thought it was going to be a super quick in and out 5 minute stop.  It turned into a two hour cluster fck, but like I said, in the big picture it could have been much worse.  It was a stupid idea for me to try to place the router in that spot.

This weekend we have stuff to do, like any other weekend.  We need to try to keep our ancillary expense down to help offset the expenses we will incur during the NYC trip so any entertainment we do until then will be on the cheap.